11 Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11
Noticing Beautiful Moments
We live in a sea of negativity. The constant focus on what is wrong affects us all. However, from time to time we become aware of beautiful moments. They break through the dullness of everyday distractedness. We are touched.
As I see it, recognizing that God has planted a yearning for eternity in our hearts. Indeed, beautiful moments, whispers of love and the feel of wonder transform nice moments into gifts from our Creator and Life Companion. All people respond to beauty. Christian return thanks for the gift.
One of the greats who celebrated beauty was Omar Khayyam. Living in the latter half of the 11th century, He was a Persian Mathematician, Astronomer and Skeptical Muslim Poet. As an agnostic, he would fit right in any gathering of today’s “smart people” who are living without God. Though more or less secular, Omar Khayyam loved beauty and pleasure. So he wrote about moments like the first shafts of light of the morning sun appearing from behind the clouds. He loved human love and wrote about the joy of spending time in a meadow with a woman. He is probably most famous for the words, “A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and Thou.”
Omary Khayyam’s Thought about the Universe
We discover, from time to time, letters and limited circulation poems what say things like this:
The sphere upon which mortals come and go,
Has no end nor beginning that we know;
And none there is to tell us in plain truth:
Whence do we come and whither do we go.
Living in what he thought of as an impersonal world, Omar Khayyam considered the cosmos to be a a sort of glorious cosmic clock. So he believed that the Creator, if there was one, was not involved in our lives. That vision results in believing that we are on our own. Beauty came and went, love was for the moment and both a diversion from the emptiness of life.
Understanding the Heart of God
In this Sermon, “The Weight of Glory,” CS Lewis wrote the following about seeing beauty but thinking there is no God:
“For a few minutes we [secular people] have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance.”
Welcome Home to the Dance of the Spirit
To know Christ is to know that beauty reflects God heart. This is so because God wired us with various abilities including the ability to experience beauty as an outpouring of his heart. Indeed, the beautiful grabs our attention and God pours its sweetness into our hearts.
Therefore, the experience of wonder, love and beauty is a great gift. Our eyes and our hearts tell us that we have “been accepted, welcomed, [and] taken into the dance.” The house of beauty becomes our home.
So we notice wonder, return thanks to its Author and know that we are a part of the Creator’s family. If you dwell were God is to be found, you find home. By beauty God transforms nice moments into powerful, soul filling gifts from a loving Father. “Take time to be holy,” as the old hymn says. Notice beauty, love and wonder and be grateful to God for the gifts.
This is such a helpful reminder to turn our attention to the beauty. Thank you so much for these Inspirations Jamie!